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Chris Harvey's avatar

Katherine,

This is a great article.

Lots of directions you could take this.

@Visakanv had a great Twitter thread about what makes America, 'Murica:

https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1363974562719756288?s=20

"One of these images is a heroic celebration of America

the other is a cringe-inducing, insulting parody of America"

(With a picture of a Bald eagle, fireballs, American flags and monster trucks)

His premise is similar to yours (that Americans don't take themselves seriously, at all) but because America has the most powerful economy, military and media, and because it has a high tolerance for humor and imagination (current environment & pandemic notwithstanding), it is the most entertaining spectacle on the planet. The entry price is learning American culture, which "is like a giant bottom up mythology-meme chaos factory."

Visa goes on:

"I suspect that America's willingness to be cringey-overblown ridiculous in its mythologizing and parodying of itself is a source of it's unfathomable cultural power and influence. it's schoolyard imagination allowed to percolate near-infinitely."

Or as Bruno Maçães put it:

"I increasingly think of China as realityland, America as fantasyland. So the new cold war will be a war between reality and fantasy. A world war in a very literal sense."

https://twitter.com/MacaesBruno/status/1301531491768377346?s=20

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A S's avatar

I agree with your assessment, overall. I think that this is part of the broader problem of growing up with too much opulence and an ability to be economically fine even if one gets fired for bad behavior. Further, that the internet has provided a mechanism where a person can get positive feeddback from thousands of people with bad taste or a lapse on judgment. The good behavior feedback system is thus degraded, and the longterm consequences are serious but not being addressed. The US was born from an idea of freedom, and it has given rise to a culture of tolerance and acceptance. Unfortunately, that culture has existed now with too much tolerance and acceptance of bad behavior such that the good habits are not sufficiently enforced.

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